1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is in the field of telecommunications and pertains particularly to a system and methods for facilitating teleconferencing.
2. Discussion of the State of the Art
In the field of telephony, more and more people are practicing teleconferencing in order to conduct business, learn subject matter, or to socially interact. A teleconferencing session is a group telephony connection or session typically hosted by a teleconferencing bridge capable of isolating users into a group of communicators over one or more channels reserved for the purpose. In typical application, a teleconference service provider allots one or more dial-in telephone numbers to a conference facility like a conference bridge for enabling a multi-party connection. Multi-party connection is generally defined as a group of more than three participants, therefore requiring a conference facility to connect them all in a single session.
A teleconference may be initiated by an organizer who first reserves or schedules a facility from a service provider and obtains one or more conference numbers, access number(s) and pass codes from the provider for authenticating users and enabling them to participate. In a simple case, a conference number is dialed followed by a conference access code to identify a scheduled conference room and a pass code to authenticate the participants. The service provider or the organizer may notify participants of the scheduled event and may provide the dialup telephone number, room or session number (access code) and personal identification number (PIN), or pass code so that when the participants call in they may be registered at the bridge to join the conference. Often an electronic voice-enabled host greets the users and asks each user for the correct code or codes to gain access to the session often referred to as a conference room. Teleconferencing may include video, chat, texting and other functions as well due to the more recent melding of telephone and Internet Protocol (IP) capabilities.
A service hosted teleconferencing facility employs typical security measures to protect sessions for security breach by unrelated third parties. Firstly, each participant must authenticate using a unique number or pass code in addition to dialing the access number to the bridge. Virtual Private Networking (VPN) protocols, Secure Socket Layering (SSL), data encryption, firewall, and other measures may also be a background part of the security for a meeting. In some respects these measures may be configurable or selectable from the viewpoint of the conferencing client based on security needs.
One major drawback of existing services is that a conference client, typically a subscriber to the service, must reserve bridge services ahead of time. The service may require knowledge of the total number of participants ahead of the event. Another problem is that conference-bridging facilities comprise hard or soft switches that have stated capacities and limitations to the number of users that may participate in a given session. Another challenge is that some communication devices and software are not compatible with all services such as VPN access and the like.
More recently, companies have developed systems and methods for making teleconferencing more of a publicly accessible tool but failed to go far enough to make teleconferencing a truly practical solution for communicating.
The inventor is aware of several attempts made in the art to make teleconferencing more user-friendly to the public such as by enhancing security, providing “free conferencing” based on shared revenue, and making access easier from a public network. However, none of these address the central issues of flexibility, usability, and security from the participant/client point of view. Reference is given to some of these applications described in the background section of the priority document incorporated in its entirety by reference in this specification.
As described above, all of the existing systems still require at least some pre-knowledge of parameters of a scheduled or impending conference at the service host and equipment provided for connecting participants. Therefore, what is needed in the art is a system and methods for facilitating teleconferencing on the fly without requiring any service/host or equipment pre-notification of the event.